Half of the Muslim students in Brussels are antisemitic, according to a study 'Jong in Brussel' by the Youth Research Platform. The chapter on antisemitism was written by sociologist Mark Elchardus of the VUB. The study was conducted by the universities of Ghent, Leuven and the Dutch-speaking VUB. It polled 2,837 students in 32 Dutch-speaking high schools in Brussels.
About half of the Muslim respondents in the survey agreed with the following statements:
- Jews want to dominate everything (total: 31.4%, Muslims: 56.8%, Non-Muslims: 10.5%)
- Most Jews think they're better than others (total: 29.9%, Muslims: 47.1%, Non-Muslims: 12.9%)
- If you do business with Jews, you should be extra careful (total: 28.6%, Muslims: 47.5%, Non-Muslims: 12.9%)
- Jews incite to war and blame others (total: 28.4%, Muslims: 53.7%, Non-Muslims: 7.7%)
Mark Elchardus says that the non-Muslim/ethnic Belgians responses in this study are comparable to similar polls in Flanders. "What is alarming is that you can describe half of the Muslim students as antisemitic, which is very high. What's worse is that those anti-Jewish feelings have nothing to do with a low educational level or social disadvantage, which is the case by racist Belgians. The antisemitism is theologically inspired and there's a direct link between being Muslim and having antisemitic feelings."
Catholics and Protestants were also more anti-Jewish than secular students, but not as much as Muslims. Religious and practicing Christians scored on average 12 points more than the secular students. Religious Muslims scored 28 points higher. However, while very religious Christians were much more antisemitic than less religious Christians, there was no such difference among Muslims.
One of the Dutch articles on the study is here.
(h/t jzaik)